1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to animated displays and particularly to displaying text or graphics in a 3D animated display.
2. Background Art
Animated displays have long been used to provide visual representations of physical systems. Such displays have evolved from rather simple 2D hand-drawn renderings to highly realistic 3D computer graphics. High quality kinematic or dynamic 3D displays are commonly produced when simulating an operating physical device, depending on the sophistication of the software driving the simulation. The displays allow a user to “see” a scene that typically cannot be viewed directly. Such simulations or models are invaluable to a user who must make decisions based on his or her understanding of an actual physical situation.
Because the sophistication of modern display methods allow highly accurate depictions from various viewer perspectives and can convey large quantities of information associated with the various display elements, the management of that associated information can become an issue. For example, textual information associated with a particular display element may be legible when viewed from one perspective (see FIG. 1A), but becomes illegible or barely legible when the perspective is changed (see FIG. 1B). One way to address that problem is to dynamically reposition and reorient the annotation so as to be perpendicular to the view direction (see FIGS. 2A and 2B) However, that may cause the displayed annotation to obscure or overlap the desired display element when viewed from certain perspectives (see FIG. 3A), or the associated information may become dissociated from the particular display element if displaced so as to keep it from obscuring or overlapping the display element (see FIG. 3B).